A surface crack in a graded coating bonded to a homogeneous substrate under dynamic loading conditions

The elastodynamic problem of a surface crack in a graded coating bonded to a homogeneous substrate under dynamic loading is considered. The coating is graded along the thickness direction and modeled as a nonhomogeneous medium with an isotropic stress–strain law. The problem is solved under the assumption of plane strain or generalized plane stress conditions. The crack surfaces are subjected to arbitrary dynamic loadings which give rise to mixed fracture modes which turn out to be uncoupled due to the fact that the crack axis is parallel to the material gradient. Using integral transforms, the resulting mixed-boundary value problem is reduced to a set of two uncoupled singular integral equations which are solved numerically to obtain the crack-tip stress intensity factors. The main objective of the paper is to study the effect of the coating thickness and nonhomogeneity parameter on the crack tip dynamic stress intensity factors for the purpose of gaining better understanding on the behavior of graded coatings.